In cellular mobile communications, cell identity (CID) positioning, also referred to as cell of origin (COO) positioning or cell global identity (CGI) positioning, is a commonly used positioning method that is easy to implement. The basic principle of a CID positioning algorithm is representing a geographical location of a terminal according to an identifier of a cell in which the terminal is located. A positioning server may learn about, according to an identifier of a cell in a cellular network, a base station corresponding to the cell and geographical information of the base station. In the CID positioning method, a CGI is generally used as a unique identifier for identifying a cell.
An enhanced CID (e-CID) positioning method is an enhanced positioning method of the conventional CID positioning method. In the eCID positioning method, based on the CID positioning method, estimation of an angle of arrival (AoA), estimation of a receiving and sending time difference (Rx−Tx time difference) of a terminal, or the like is added.
An observed time difference of arrival (OTDOA) positioning method is also a common positioning technology. The principle of the OTDOA positioning method is that: In a system that has at least three positioning base stations, a location of a terminal may be determined according to time differences of arrival between downlink positioning signals of different positioning base stations. The downlink positioning signals may be reference signals or synchronization signals. A positioning server requests a positioning base station to report a sending configuration of a positioning reference signal (PRS) (herein, it refers to a positioning signal) of the positioning base station, and notifies, in a form of assistance data, the terminal of the sending configuration, and then, the terminal receives PRSs from multiple positioning base stations according to the assistance data and identifies an arrival moment of each PRS on a first arrival path, so that the terminal can obtain time differences of arrival between PRSs from the different positioning base stations, and report the time differences of arrival to the positioning server. The positioning server receives the time differences between the signals from the different positioning base stations through the terminal, and may map the time differences to differences between distances from the terminal to the different positioning base stations, and perform mathematical calculation according to the differences between distances from the terminal to the different positioning base stations and by using a hyperbolic model, so that the positioning server can obtain an accurate location of the terminal.
However, in the prior art, positioning accuracy still needs to be improved in some scenarios.